Valve announces the Steam Controller

By BatRastered — September 29, 2013
Tags: news pc steam valve

Part 3 of the Steam living room announcements is a controller.

Part 3 of the Steam living room announcements is a controller.

It looks a little weird...

Steam Controller

The controller features two touch pads and a center touchscreen plus the usual shoulder and trigger buttons and some oddly placed face buttons. There are also two paddle buttons on the back.

The most prominent elements of the Steam controller are its two circular trackpads. Driven by the player’s thumbs, each one has a high-resolution trackpad as its base. It is also clickable, allowing the entire surface to act as a button. The trackpads allow far higher fidelity input than has previously been possible with traditional handheld controllers. Steam gamers, who are used to the input associated with PCs, will appreciate that the Steam Controller’s resolution approaches that of a desktop mouse.

Whole genres of games that were previously only playable with a keyboard and mouse are now accessible from the sofa. RTS games. Casual, cursor-driven games. Strategy games. 4x space exploration games. A huge variety of indie games. Simulation titles. And of course, Euro Truck Simulator 2.

In addition, games like first-person shooters that are designed around precise aiming within a large visual field now benefit from the trackpads’ high resolution and absolute position control.

You can draw your own conclusions as to what games will be good with that controller, but until we get hands on with it, it will be impossible to know for sure.

In the meantime, an Xbox 360 controller is still the best PC gamepad if you aren't playing keyboard/mouse. And, of course, if you're playing a fighting game, you'll still want a fightstick.

Original source.

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Valve announces the Steam Controller

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